NTPC to double capacity to 90K mw in 10 years: CMD

At present, the company generates 44,398 MW of power from all sources of energy. Out of this, 12,115 MW or 27 per cent of the total was added in the last four and a half years.

“We have 23,000 MW under execution, which will be commissioned in the next five years. Another 15,000 MW is under award stage and will complete in seven years and further 8,000 MW is in planning stages and will take about a decade to come up,” NTPC’s Chairman and Managing Director Arup Roy Choudhury told PTI in an interview.

The company, which generates maximum power from coal, plans to include solar energy in its total installed capacity in the coming years. “We are hoping to do solar power projects even as there are various challenges in executing those plants. Land availability and connectivity with the national and regional transmission grids are the issues related to this segment of electricity generation,” Choudhury said.

Last year, NTPC had signed an initial agreement with Andhra Pradesh government for developing 1,000 MW solar power projects in the state.

Stating that the returns in solar power are also less as compared to conventional sources, Choudhury said, “I am the country’s largest power generation company, I have to generate some amount of power from solar as it is essential for the company and the sector.”

Besides, the state-run firm is looking at brownfield expansion by acquiring some stranded public or private sector power projects.

“It is a nascent stage, but all I can reveal is that we have identified a few projects in Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh and the due diligence is on,” he said.

The company is reported to be in talks with various entities, including L&T and Shapoorji Pallonji Group, to take over their distressed assets. Choudhury, during his stint as CMD NTPC, spearheaded the company in solar power generation, besides other things.

Meanwhile, Coal India Ltd (CIL) missed the production target for the financial year 2014-15 by 3 per cent recording an output of 494.23 million tonnes. The company’s output target was 507 million tonnes for the fiscal, Coal India Ltd said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

In the financial year 2013-2014, the company had clocked production of 462.53 million tonnes of coal. Last month, the company produced 57.27 million tonnes of coal as against its target of 56.87 million tonnes.

While, off-take or actual lifting of coal by consumers for 2014-15 stood at 489.34 million tonnes, short by six per cent of the set target. Last month, Coal India chairman and managing director S Bhattacharya had said: “We would be somewhere around 493 MT in the current fiscal.”

“In the absence of access to resources”, it may not be possible for Coal India Ltd to achieve the target for the current fiscal, he had added. “The environment clearance could not be operationalised at the state level,” Bhattacharya said.